Housing Discussion

[nocalex]

Was your expectation that you would be able to login to a 2.5 year old shard, currently the most popular/populous in the world, and find a place to drop a house?

Yea. It was for me. I didn't expect to be able to place a large house. I didn't expect to get a good location. I did expect there would be something. It's disappointing that there isn't because as explained above a rented room has far less utility than a house. Which just makes everything harder for newer players.

Don't get it twisted I really like how things work on this shard. But like the guy you were responding to I also think that a lack of housing opportunity on this shard is ultimately going to be a deal breaker for me as well. I think it is for a lot of new players. If the guys running the shard care then great, if they don't I get that too. Nothing wrong with wanting to limit a shards population. I'm just saying if they want a steady stream of new players that stick around they are going to have to do something more with housing IMO.

 

[Mental]

Was your expectation that you would be able to login to a 2.5 year old shard, currently the most popular/populous in the world, and find a place to drop a house?

Not right away, but after some searching - yes, I expect to, absolutely. There is absolutely nothing out there.

It feels like there are more houses than players.

 

[Owyn]

Not right away, but after some searching - yes, I expect to, absolutely. There is absolutely nothing out there.

It feels like there are more houses than players.

There are 51945 accounts, 115801 characters, and 4321 houses, with 866 rental rooms.

 

[Mental]

There are 51945 accounts, 115801 characters, and 4321 houses, with 866 rental rooms.

Hard to debate stats, but the feeling as a player is that there are way more houses than you see players playing.

And if you're the kinda guy that doesn't like critique -- I'm not trying to ruin your day, it's a great shard with lots of great ideas implemented. I'm enjoying myself. I would enjoy myself exponentially more if I could do it out of a small 8x8 at the very least.

 

[Owyn]

Hard to debate stats, but the feeling as a player is that there are way more houses than you see players playing.

And if you're the kinda guy that doesn't like critique -- I'm not trying to ruin your day, it's a great shard with lots of great ideas implemented. I'm enjoying myself. I would enjoy myself exponentially more if I could do it out of a small 8x8 at the very least.

It will take a lot more to ruin my day than to complain the shard is too popular for you to find a house.

 

[Mental]

I always tell my people if you don't present a solution, then it's just whining. So here's a suggestion:

Enable recalling out of rentals so players can create a rune library inside one. That still doesn't solve not being able to have a vendor -- create a flea market. A place where players without a house can purchase one or two vendors and place them inside a market stall that can be rented out. A few towns could have this, or it can be created as a whole new location. As far as I know there is no central market anywhere. You could have 50 to a 100 vendors per market. Non-house owners only.

You still lack the view and the easier access to harvesting/gathering and smelting and stuff, but it would be a great step.

 

[Owyn]

I always tell my people if you don't present a solution, then it's just whining. So here's a suggestion:

Enable recalling out of rentals so players can create a rune library inside one. That still doesn't solve not being able to have a vendor -- create a flea market. A place where players without a house can purchase one or two vendors and place them inside a market stall that can be rented out. A few towns could have this, or it can be created as a whole new location. As far as I know there is no central market anywhere. You could have 50 to a 100 vendors per market. Non-house owners only.

You still lack the view and the easier access to harvesting/gathering and smelting and stuff, but it would be a great step.

We're going to be adding recall and hike OUT of Inn Rooms. The central market idea is nice, we'll consider it. Thanks!

 

[AreYouKidden]

Yea. It was for me. I didn't expect to be able to place a large house. I didn't expect to get a good location. I did expect there would be something. It's disappointing that there isn't because as explained above a rented room has far less utility than a house. Which just makes everything harder for newer players.

Don't get it twisted I really like how things work on this shard. But like the guy you were responding to I also think that a lack of housing opportunity on this shard is ultimately going to be a deal breaker for me as well. I think it is for a lot of new players. If the guys running the shard care then great, if they don't I get that too. Nothing wrong with wanting to limit a shards population. I'm just saying if they want a steady stream of new players that stick around they are going to have to do something more with housing IMO.

Housing is generally considered an end game buy - one for convenience etc.. I'm curious to understand where you put housing in the heirarchy of things? You feel its necessary to play the game, when it's really just something of convenience, you can live out of a bank, or out of an inn room without a problem.. So what is a realistic amount of time to expect housing in your eyes?

Which of the following is a fair statement in your eyes?

a) housing should be achieve-able in my first week of play
b) housing should be achieve-able in my first month of play
c) housing should be achieve-able in my first 6 months of play
d) housing should be achieve-able in my first year of play

 

[AreYouKidden]

I always tell my people if you don't present a solution, then it's just whining. So here's a suggestion:

Enable recalling out of rentals so players can create a rune library inside one. That still doesn't solve not being able to have a vendor -- create a flea market. A place where players without a house can purchase one or two vendors and place them inside a market stall that can be rented out. A few towns could have this, or it can be created as a whole new location. As far as I know there is no central market anywhere. You could have 50 to a 100 vendors per market. Non-house owners only.

You still lack the view and the easier access to harvesting/gathering and smelting and stuff, but it would be a great step.

Players actually put up vendor rental contract deeds all the time, with a weekly charge, so you can definitely get a vendor without a rental home - and depending on what your willing to pay, one in a high traffic vendor area. If you want to be the vendor home owner, then you need to invest some time/commitment to purchasing a home from another user. There are houses that go IDOC weekly ,and get sold off - the price is high yes, due to demand, but the economy of the server has also mature to the point where you get a lucky drop of powder azure cloth boots, and your 1.5 million richer, and can afford a house.

The mountain looks big, take a few steps, it's really not as big as one thinks..

 

[a Pathfinder]

Or mine through the mountain.

 

[Laughing Skull]

Which of the following is a fair statement in your eyes?

a) housing should be achieve-able in my first week of play
b) housing should be achieve-able in my first month of play
c) housing should be achieve-able in my first 6 months of play
d) housing should be achieve-able in my first year of play

This is the crux of the issue.

I believe the answer to this question is dependent on the population of the server. But, I also fully understand that open land is a finite resource. Messing with the land mass has to be analyzed very carefully. If you add more land and disperse the player base, player interaction goes down which affects gameplay. The constant player interaction is what makes outlands the phenomenon it is. It is a very delicate formula to be messed with, because once you add it, there is no taking it away.

Back to the question at hand... Housing is an end game goal on a highly populated server. There are so many more important things to focus on as a new player. Besides once you have obtained and leveled your codex, grimoire, aspect, gathering skill, or whatever it is you choose, you will have a steady income stream coming in. There is still permanent housing that can be obtained for under 1 millin gold. A couple million gold is very reasonable to obtain within your first 6 months.

And I haven't even brought up the inn system yet. This is a perfect stepping stone until you obtain the funds for a house. Players just have to understand they can't join a highly populated server and expect to instantly obtain an end game item.

 

[Sir Papeth]

Many have already said it. Can't come onto the most popular UO shard that was the home for many during the COVID quarantine and expect to just stroll around and find a spot to slap down an 8x8. The world is busy and homes are being sold daily. Just because you are a low baller with no cheddar doesn't mean the server is unfair and doesn't care about new players. The server offers a lot of cheap alternatives for new players. There are storage lockers you can keep in your bank, inns you can rent, they have also updated the inn system so it is more homey. Seems like the real issue is new players coming in and thinking a home is something you can get by casually playing for a month or so on the most popular UO server.

Also, it seems like players want that nostalgia of having a home because they had a cool home on some other server that's dead right now, yada yada. It's 2021 mate, if you don't got money to buy a home then rent a room and get money. A home isn't needed to grow on Outlands. There's so many other aspects of the game that are more important and the inn literally offers everything you'd need from a starter home. If you struggle with making money well then try other ways of making money besides the usual farming grind. Go pk and steal, Tmaps are profitable, you can grind out pvp events solo like town struggles, rifts, and sell points for extra cash, you can try your luck at poker, you can pretty much do anything you can think of to make money. Like I said, if you are a low baller that's your problem and not the shards. The systems in play give new players everything they need to start off easy and strong.

The amount of effort and responsiveness the staff gives to the community shows they care. Questioning whether they care or not because new players can't buy a home within a month is a shit argument.

 

[Mental]

All good points but they don't take away the fact that house ownership is a very large part of playing this game. Instrumental for many. I think that the changes Owyn is awaiting regarding recall/hike and will discuss is a great step forward.

However, the greatest thing I have noticed here is the maturity of the posters. I think it's obvious from the quality and the tone of the posts that people who play UO are a bit older and don't just resort to vitriol as most everyone does these days. The answers are well composed and thought out. So, thank you.

That's worth sticking around for, ain't it?


Cya in the game.

 

[nocalex]

Reading through the above there are a lot of good points. I guess I was hoping housing would be available sooner but it shouldn't be surprising it isn't. If they do change the recalling in rented rooms than that is enough.

 

[emberfiend]

Also in favour of completely silent house collapse - that'd be a meaningfully 'organic' injection of activity to shard-wide life.

But I think activity requirements to refresh are the real key here:
- Allow a 3-6 month buffer to handle kids and holidays
- Allow all kinds of activity to refill the buffer
- Allow all characters on an account to put progress toward that account's house's activity progress
- Scale the activity required with the cost of the deed (not overly punitively: maybe a castle needs 5x more activity than an 8x8)
- Spend proportionally out of the buffer for the number of days added in a sign refresh

So Lois M. McMillionaire has to pay 100 points per month toward sign refreshes to keep her castle up, but she's banked 500+ of her max 600 points by being active. So she goes a week between refreshes, and when she does refresh, she pays 25 points (7 days / 28 days) from her buffer.

And Dave L. Nubenstein must pay only 20 points per month for his 8x8, which (relatively speaking) is about as difficult for him: as a new player his farming speed is pretty low. His max is only 120 (monthly upkeep * 6) but he usually hovers around 30 with his activity level.

Quantifying activity is the tricky bit. Certainly you can have all society progress count, but then you need to account for people who RP, who decorate, who PK, and so on. But after you've figured that out, the system could be pretty solid. (You could even just use time logged in as a rudimentary but probably still somewhat effective metric, because then someone is at least running a client, which represents some logistical overhead. And clients already get logged out if they're inactive.)

You set the activity level requirement low, so the real punishment is really toward the people sitting completely passively on houses. Then at least all those accounts need characters with skills which play (or sit ingame, at least). At the moment, the cost to them (of completely pricing new players out of the housing market) is 20 seconds to do a sign refresh every 35 days, which is way too low.

Effectively this ties house size to activity level. For the land tied up by enormous plots, I think this is perhaps a sensible direction. You can still be barely active and show off your pixels: get a smaller house with a tiny activity-upkeep cost. But if you want to sit on 29x29 of that good good land, you have to at least play 2-3 days a month (or be logged in 2-3 days a month).

 

[Mental]

How about requiring an account to gross a certain amount of gold per month to be considered active? But how does this affect crafter only accounts? Hmmm...

Love the idea of the silent house collapse, as long as people with 3 accounts and 3 houses don't place any more. Has this ever been audited; do people with more than 3 houses get banned here?

 

[AreYouKidden]

How about requiring an account to gross a certain amount of gold per month to be considered active? But how does this affect crafter only accounts? Hmmm...

Love the idea of the silent house collapse, as long as people with 3 accounts and 3 houses don't place any more. Has this ever been audited; do people with more than 3 houses get banned here?

People with more than 3 accounts/houses get banned here if they get caught yes, and it does get audited - it's happened in the past.

 

[nocalex]

Admittedly there were some good points made and I guess it was a bit much to expect actual housing. Still though I think resources are getting tight. Lord help you if you need nightshade.

 

[Laughing Skull]

Admittedly there were some good points made and I guess it was a bit much to expect actual housing. Still though I think resources are getting tight. Lord help you if you need nightshade.

I find the key to buying those regs/scrolls/etc.... is to always buy them. If you wait until you need them then you will find yourself in a pickle. For the most part, I try to hit up the vendors once when I log in and once before I log off. I will buy the same things over and over:

Empty Bottles
Nightshade
Spider's Silk
Sulphurous Ash

Using this method I never run out, however every now and then I will see that I have the opposite problem.... way too many. At that point I will just exclude it from my shopping list for the next week.

 

[Owyn]

Reading through the above there are a lot of good points. I guess I was hoping housing would be available sooner but it shouldn't be surprising it isn't. If they do change the recalling in rented rooms than that is enough.

It was changed.